"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."- John Dewey.
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Thursday, September 04, 2008

35% of Science and Math teachers lack English proficiency

Is it a surprise that the MOE is considering getting rid of teaching Science and Math in English when 35% of its teachers have a poor command of English? Again, this is one in a long line of bad implementation projects in the education system in Malaysia. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read this line:

The Government, he said, had provided all types of assistance to these teachers to improve their command of English, including monetary facilities to reference books and tuition classes. "We found that teachers used these monetary aids provided by the Ministry for other unrelated purposes," he added.

16 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I hope they get rid of teaching Science and Math in English. If the teachers themselves fail to communicate/teach effectively in English, the students end up learning almost nothing. Let the students figure out for themselves on acquiring the knowledge in one-or-multiple languages. I am really sick with all the flip-flop education policy.

Well, they should of thought of all these in the first place. And they thought by monetary facilities plus a few reference book and tuition classes can make a significant CHANGE towards the English Level in those teacher? And they thought MONEY is everything? Unless they can change their HABITS - Listen to English News, write in English, Talk in English, apa macam pun in English, it won't be effective. The money is just an excuse.

This is the typical Bolehland style of management - Cannot speak and write English? Money money come. Cracks in MRR2? Money injected. To increase the productivity of civil servants? More Money injected. To improve the higher quality of education? More money!

Did you see anything going better after all these TAX PAYER's MONEY is injected? The answer is pretty obvious. How pathetic!

this is one policy that should not be reversed. teachers who can't learn english should be sacked. Students have enough flip flopping already..and sufficient $$ have been invested on this project. Further with its good objectives, i don't see a reason why the project has to die simply because all the teachers are useless.

They should not stop teaching Science and Math in English because when students go out and work, they will have to deal with the reality that the business world is dominated by the English language. What needs to be done is to hire more teachers who are qualified to teach these subjects in the English language. Furtheremore, they really have to eradicate this matriculation mentality where even high school students go to these services whose providers are also their teachers. Don't you think this whole thing is a real double whammy?

What is happening with the standards of our teachers nowadays.There are even some English Language teachers who can't seems to differenciate the use of tenses in their lessons.Who can we blame for this matter? Is it the MOE?The teachers themselves?Or the universities for producing teachers with lack of quality?

Another stupid BN policy of using Bahasa for teaching science. How can we have a uni in the top 100 when our teachers and students cannot even communicate their research orally and in journals using proper english. English is the language of science. Bahasa is the language of idiots.

It is a sad thing that some people posting in this blogspot is not careful with what they are writing. One Anonymous said that "Bahasa is the language of idiots." I think he should be careful with what he is writing because there are some students who also reads this blogspot and they might get a wrong impression.

If you do a quick research, Bahasa Malaysia is actually a concoction of a few languages like Sanskrit, etc. There are even some influences of Chinese and Polynesian languages. So please the blogspot is aptly called Education Malaysia and therefor we should at least make an effort that what we write here make sense.

The future of young Malaysians CANNOT be held ransom by this group of teachers who will not/cannot pick up the English language. I think it only shows poor attitude/aptitude on the part of the teachers.

Instead, we need to seriously crank up the teaching of English in schools. If we do not do something about it, our global competitiveness will be seriously threatened.

there is a deep need to bring a revived enthusiasm to the civil service:1. the ministry must change the public perception that civil service is 'sad work' to one that is 'honourable'.2. the ministry must go beyond expecting civil servants to work out of honour and start to give proper recognition and compensation.3. there is a need for stricter quality control by the ministry in ensuring the english proficiency of teachers.4. there is a need to understand that education requires a long period of gestation and cannot be expected to churn out results immediately.5. there is a great need for foresight in determining the direction for the future.

It's a pity the PPSMI will be abolished soon. I was a student who went through the PPSMI period and I really didn't have any problem learning the subjects in English. Honestly, the reference books and textbooks were a much better help when it comes to studying maths and science in English. Whether the teachers can communicate in English fluently or not in teaching the subjects, it really doesn't have much impact on the students because they rely more on books and the internet than their teachers.